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2020-05-08

Under Doug Ford, Ontarians can expect electricity emissions to triple by 2030

By Alastair Sharp

The central control room of a nuclear power plant. Fragment of the nuclear reactor control panel.

Carbon emissions from Ontario’s electricity sector are set to almost triple over the next decade, as gas-fired generation largely fills the void left by major nuclear refurbishments and the dismantling of green energy under Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government.

The sharp jump in Ontario’s reliance on natural gas — the only source of operational emissions in its supply mix — comes as Ford’s government has also abandoned a wide range of energy efficiency programs and rebuffed an offer from Quebec to provide it with a long-term supply of cheap hydroelectric power.

Critics say that all of those greener options are now cheaper than either gas or nuclear, leading them to question Ford’s ability to deliver on a campaign promise to lower ratepayers’ bills or get anywhere near achieving the province’s emission-reduction target of a 30 per cent cut from 2005 levels by 2030.

“It’s a very bad proposal,” said Jack Gibbons, the chair of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance. “It will mean Ontario won’t be able to meet its 2030 climate target, and that is simply not acceptable.”

Ontario’s electricity sector generated four megatonnes of carbon emissions in 2018. But it is set to double from that level by 2023 and to hit 11 MT by 2030, according to forecasts in the Independent Electricity Systems Operator’s (IESO) latest 20-year planning outlook, released last month.

Ontario’s auditor general said late last year that Ford’s threadbare climate policies would lead to the province missing its 2030 target by between 7 and 14 MT.

The province is planning to spend some $25 billion between 2016 and 2031 to extend the life of 10 reactors at the Darlington and Bruce plants, while the Progressive Conservatives are seeking to extend the life of a third ageing plant in Pickering until 2025, which critics warn is a risky undertaking.

Electricity generation in Ontario had emitted 35.4 MT in 2005, when the former Liberal government was only a couple of years into the phase-out of coal-fired power. Coal had accounted for a quarter of the supply mix in 2003 and was gone by 2014. That effort is widely credited as the single biggest reason Ontario is anywhere near that 2030 target.

Much of the shortfall was picked up by a greater reliance on nuclear power, but now that it needs to come offline Ford’s government is looking to gas to pick up the slack.

“The real threat now is that all of that progress we’ve made is about to be reversed and emissions to rise again from the electricity sector as Ontario embraces more natural gas,” said Keith Brooks, program director at Environmental Defence.

Ontario has a large fleet of gas-fired plants, which are typically underused. While they can produce more than a quarter of the province’s total capacity, they accounted for only eight per cent of electricity generation in 2016, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.

The IESO’s projects that the share of Ontario’s electricity supply that will come from gas will rise from 10 per cent in 2020 to 20 per cent in 2040, with its utilization rate increasing from 20 per cent to between 40 and 60 per cent.

Gibbons, a former commissioner of Toronto Hydro, said the province could avoid upping the use of existing gas plants and even walk away from the nuclear refurbishments not yet in process while still securing enough power for the province’s needs.

“We don’t have to operate the gas plants at as high a utilization rate as Premier Ford is planning, and we’re saying we can avoid the rebuild of at least eight of those nuclear reactors,” he said. “And those savings, because they are such a high-cost option, will mean we can actually lower our bills while we are buying more low-cost waterpower from Quebec and while we’re investing in energy efficiency and investing in cost-effective Made-in-Ontario green energy.”

But the Ford government has so far moved in the other direction on all these fronts, cancelling some 750 wind and solar projects, cutting budgets for energy efficiency programs and turning away from an existing memorandum of understanding to import hydroelectricity from Quebec.

The Ford government did not respond directly to questions about how it intends to mitigate or offset this expected increase.

It also did not say whether it would consider the emissions implications of a report Energy Minister Greg Rickford has asked the IESO to submit by the end of February with recommendations on “any and all viable cost-lowering opportunities” related to larger gas, wind and solar contracts that expire in the next ten years.